Clare Gest

Portfolio Leasing Coordinator

Irgens

I graduated from Nathan Hale high school in West Allis in 2002. Following high school, I went to UW-Milwaukee for 2 semesters but then realized I didn’t know what direction to take with my education. Rather than aimlessly participating in school, I worked several retail management jobs before enrolling in the paralegal program at MATC in 2009. I was offered a job as a paralegal in 2010 and have worked in Trusts and Estates for the past 12 years. While working as a paralegal, I re-enrolled at UW-Milwaukee to finish my 4-year college degree. I worked full time and went to school full time and graduated with a double major in Social Work and Psychology in 2014. During the pandemic, I dropped my work at the law firm down to part-time and took a social work position with the City of Milwaukee. This position gave me the opportunity to assist in running the mass vaccination effort at the WI Center from January 2021-May 2021, which was an incredible experience. The opportunity to interview Irgens presented itself a couple of months after the vaccination site shut down. Even though I had no commercial real estate experience, the position seemed like a great fit and presented an exciting new challenge. I have been with Irgens now since late July of 2021.

Q) What is the best piece of advice you have received?
A) Stay curious.

Q) What is your favorite quote?
A) “We can either make ourselves miserable or we can make ourselves strong, the amount of work is the same”

Q) What was cool when you were growing up but isn’t cool now?
A) Spiral perms

Q) What’s your favorite place to travel to?
A) Within the United States I would say the west coast is my favorite place to travel to (California and Utah specifically). Outside of the USA, the best trip I have ever taken (and would go back in a heartbeat) was to South Africa a few years ago.

Q) If you could have lunch with anyone in the world, who would it be?
A) This answer changes all the time. Currently it would be Aaron Rodgers, but if Anthony Bourdain was still living, that would definitely be my answer.